The family of a 37-year-old Black man who was shot and killed by an Aurora police officer after a traffic stop-turned-crash escalated into a physical confrontation is suing the city and officer for wrongful death, excessive force and federal civil rights violations.
Attorneys for Rajon Belt-Stubblefield’s estate, wife and eight children filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Denver on Sunday against the city of Aurora and Officer Matthew Neely, who is also facing second-degree murder and manslaughter charges in Belt-Stubblefield’s death after he was indicted by an Arapahoe County grand jury earlier this month.
In the 144-page complaint, attorneys with Denver law firms Ascend Counsel and Newman McNulty described Belt-Stubblefield’s killing as “the predictable product of the Aurora Police Departmentap longstanding customs and practices of unnecessary escalation, excessive force and racially biased policing.”
“In spite of years of community outcry for change; a finding by the Colorado Attorney General that the Aurora Police Department engages in excessive force, biased policing, and excessive force on Black people; and millions and millions of dollars of civil rights settlements and judgments, Aurora refuses to change,” attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.
When reached by email, Aurora police spokesperson Kristopher McDowell said the department generally does not comment on pending litigation. Attorneys for Neely could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday night.
The lawsuit makes eight claims against the city and Neely, including for excessive force, violating the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment, wrongful death and intentional infliction of emotional distress for killing Belt-Stubblefield in front of his son.
Among the claims is that Neely’s decision to again shoot Belt-Stubblefield after he had already shot him twice in the chest was “independently unreasonable.”
“During that interval (after the first two shots,) Neely had time to observe that Mr. Belt-Stubblefield had stopped. Neely visibly changed the angle of his firearm, re-aimed from Mr. Belt-Stubblefield’s torso toward his head, and made what Neely later described as a conscious decision to ‘change the target,’ ” attorneys wrote.
Aurora residents had filed complaints against Neely for racial profiling and “racially selective traffic enforcement” in 2014, 2020, 2022 and 2025, including 36 days before Belt-Stubblefield’s death, according to the complaint.
Department officials closed all of the complaints for being unfounded, mirroring previous incidences where the agency classified all bias complaints in previous years as unfounded or exonerated.
“Aurora’s bias-complaint process did not fail to detect a hidden pattern; it received the pattern, recorded it, coded it, and closed it,” attorneys for Belt-Stubblefield’s family wrote.
The lawsuit also describes Neely as having a longstanding reputation in the department for problematic policing and use of force, which was not logged in official systems or records. Neely was allowed to return to work days after Belt-Stubblefield’s death, and the department has imposed “no known discipline” against him, nor interviewed Belt-Stubblefield’s son or other eyewitnesses, the family’s attorneys wrote.
Belt-Stubblefield’s family is seeking unspecified monetary damages, including for loss of life, emotional distress and grief.
This is a developing story and maybe updated.
